Door Kickers

I’ve noted the theoretical problems with door-to-door weapons searches. Let’s see how that works in the real world.

Firearms Recovery Operation Held In Santa Cruz County
Santa Cruz County law enforcement agencies teamed up with agents from the California Department of Justice Bureau of Firearms for a two-day operation on Tuesday and Wednesday to recover guns owned by individuals who are prohibited from possessing them, according to the Santa Cruz County Law Enforcement Chief’s Association.

In this case, California started with a gun owner database, which they compared to other databases to see who suddenly became a prohibited person. So, unlike my worst-case (for the cops) “belling the cat” scenario, they should have a good firearms hit rate. Right?

So how did it go? Multi-agency teams. Two days. 47 addresses.

One bust. For one gun.

At that rate, it’s going to take them 426 days just to clear the current backlog of 10,000 newly prohibited persons they think they know about. Never mind all the folks continually being added to the list even as they work.

But — as the infomercial says — Wait! There’s more.

One bust. For one gun. Perhaps that means that Californians are just really compliant with gunpeople control laws, unlike the old days of 20 years past when the state saw a whopping 2.33% compliance rate with registration, and those prohibited folks properly disposed of their firearms. Except…

California does have registration. And universal preemptively-prove-your-innocence checks. If they properly disposed of their guns, that should have been in the state’s records and there’d be no reason to send the confiscation squads.

Are state records that bad? Did 46 out of 47 people lawfully transport their firearms out of state? Did 46 out of 47 unlawfully transfer them within the state? Did the cops simply not try very hard?

Was 1 out 47 simply a slow learner? Or maybe he didn’t even know about that protective order.

If it took California 2 days to not find 46 registered weapons in the hands of 46 registered gun owners, how long will it take to fail the other 9,953 (and counting) times?

On the bright side, this may identify another challenge to California’s obscene gun laws. You may recall that New York City was forced to end their warrantless “stop and frisk” program not merely because it was unconstitutional. Courts have long upheld unconstitutional practices if the government could demonstrate an overriding need for the sake of public safety. The judge in the NYC case tossed “stop and frisk” because, according to the city’s own data, it didn’t work, obliviating their “public safety” argument.

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